


Hagalaz

by Dream Mender (Llewcie)



Series: Rune Cycle [2]
Category: The Dresden Files - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Stripping, The Dreaming, Touch-Starved, harry is 17
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-10
Updated: 2016-01-10
Packaged: 2018-05-13 00:57:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5688427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Llewcie/pseuds/Dream%20Mender
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry finds the way in. Dreamcastles are built to hold dreams, but nothing built in dreams can hold back the inevitable pull of life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hagalaz has two meanings. The first is shelter from the storm. The second is the inevitability that the storm will find you, rip up your shelter, and destroy everything you have. Hail. Destruction. There is nowhere to hide, in the end. But we try, anyway, because we're stubborn as hell, and occasionally, we can outlast the storm's fury.

“Bob! Bob, you have to come upstairs with me tonight!” 

I glanced up from my study of a particularly obtuse selection of Harry’s writing to find the object of my perusal standing flushed and beaming at the bottom of the staircase next to the library, half-clothed in jeans and a startling mop of dark, curly locks that would have made Pan choke on his wine. I raised what I hoped was a forbidding eyebrow, but I rather doubted it. It was difficult not to be dragged in by his enthusiasm, especially when his essays were so painful. “What is it, Harry? You didn’t attempt to summon another air spirit, did you?”

Harry wasn’t put off in the least. Even two years ago, I might have been able to cow him with a look, but now, in the full flush of his youth, he was something of a mystery to me. Having had apprentices only when corporeal, I had always had other options besides facial expressions with which to make them behave, and now I found myself at a severe disadvantage. If it had been anyone other than Harry, it would have been distressing. Besides, I was curious—he had been in the doldrums for days. He flashed a bright grin, untainted by politics. “Will you come with me, or are you going to stay and grade that horrid essay I wrote?”

Justin would have ordered, or just picked up my skull. Harry asked, as if I actually had a choice in the matter. My heart melted. “I’ll come. If you rewrite this waste of parchment and ink—it is truly one of your worst.”

“Done.” He took my skull carefully in his hands, and as always when he did so, I felt a flush of warmth ribbon through me. In contrast, Justin’s hands on my skull felt like a pit of snakes. Moving beyond that familiar warming feeling to the coherent thought on the other side, I blinked, attempting to swallow my astonishment. For Harry to agree so blithely to redo his homework… well, whatever it was must have been extraordinary. I was, naturally, instantly suspicious.

“You didn’t try to summon a fire spirit, Harry?”

He trotted lightly up the stairs ahead of me. “Bob, honestly—you can’t believe that I can stay out of trouble for five minutes without you looking over my shoulder?” 

“No. I taught you, and I know what you’re capable of. Five minutes might be an eternity.” I was rewarded with a boyish snort for my troubles, but I knew I had gotten my point across in the sudden straightening of Harry’s lean shoulders. 

We walked down the long paneled hallway, past doorways, past paintings of previous Morningways—the Hall of Eyes, Harry called it. He hunched down unconsciously, and my brow furrowed. Guilt? Curiouser and curiouser… I was exceedingly glad that Justin was out of town this month. Timing was everything. The rotting bastard wouldn’t be back for at least a fortnight, out on Council business, or so he said. He was often gone, but it was rare that he was gone so long and didn’t take me along for the ride. I suppose he wanted someone to keep an eye on Harry, but Justin was dangerously mistaken if he thought my loyalties were to him rather to his young charge. I was bound within the house and grounds, it was true. But not everything was black and white in the world of magic, especially where young Harry was concerned.

We reached his bedroom rather than the study that I had expected, and I frowned at him. “Harry, you’re a little old for a nightlight…” I began teasingly.

“And a little young for the thousand year old wizard, yeah, I got that the first fifty times, Bob. Geez.” He rolled his eyes and plunked my skull down on his headboard. I crossed my arms and raised both eyebrows, waiting for an explanation. He climbed up on his bed, an antique four-poster carved from mahogany, and settled into an easy sprawl. “So, I need your help with something.”

“I gathered that,” I answered wryly. He patted the bed next to him, and I shrugged, moving to appear as if I were sitting next to him. We played at being normal, and sometimes I craved that even more than he did. There was no shame in wanting a semblance of life, I told myself. But I never let Justin see… no. That would not have been politic, for either of us. Harry nodded at me, moving slightly closer. he took a deep breath, as if he expected it to be his last for a very long time.

And then, plunged. “I’ve… found a path into the Nevernever, Bob. Through my dreams. And I want you to come with me, because… because ghosts are solid there.” His words had been measured, as if he had practiced them again and again. My mouth went dry, and I blinked at him, uncomprehending, still stuck on his first sentences.

“You found a path into the Nevernever through your dreams, Harry?” I’m certain I looked a fool, mouth agape, but this… this was… unprecedented. I was astonished at the thought—if true, then Harry would be the first wizard I had ever heard of who had accomplished such a thing consciously, so young, and without sigils and incantation. Harry nodded, his enthusiasm dampened by the expression on my face. 

His voice fell to a whisper, even if there was no tyrant to overhear. “Did I do something wrong?”

I shook my head. “No. Just very rare. And dangerous.” And then my brain caught up to what he had said. “You want me to come with you, so that I can be corporeal?” Another, much hotter flood soaked through my muscle and bone. This child would be the death of me. He nodded, a flicker of his smile coming back.

“You told me that bringing myself into the Nevernever will put me on equal terms with the insubstantial.”

“And to avoid it at all costs,” I added, evidentially remembering the lesson better than he did.

He nodded impatiently. “Except that I’ve used my own Dreaming, Bob. It’s isolated—we can use a corner of it and buttress it—make a fortress that no one can get into. And then you can… you can teach me how to fence properly. And all of the sigils that I can’t draw? You’re complaining endlessly how bad my handwriting is, and…” He was reaching, and we both knew it.

“Harry, do you have any idea how reckless your experimentation must have been?” I pinched the bridge of my nose, distracted by a thousand things that could have gone wrong. He frowned at me, chewing at his bottom lip. “How in the world did you get in?”

He cast pleading eyes up at me, big and brown and hopeful-- the same gaze he used when he desired me to read to him, or tell him stories from my shadowy, checkered past. In other words, a gaze I was defenseless against. I narrowed my eyes in an attempt to shield myself. “Bob, it was an accident, I swear. One moment I was asleep, and the next moment I was in a boat.” He clasped his hands, but didn’t look away—he knew when he had me, the conniving little plotter. 

“How did you know it was the Dreaming?” I asked, intrigued despite myself. There were untold doorways into the Nevernever. I thought I recognized this one.

He nodded, piecing together what he thought might be my chain of thought. “Because I had been dreaming about a lake, and a boat. And I know the difference between a lucid dream and being awake. I woke up in the Nevernever, Bob. In my dream.”

I chewed at my lip for a few moments, just thinking. It was possible, but a rare gift. So rare, in fact, that I had only ever read about it—in all my years of mortality and of slavery, never once had I met a mortal who could wake from dreams into the Dreaming without extensive training. And even then, it was rare enough. But then, Harry was a wizard with an atypical gift. At seventeen, he had the raw power of half the Council combined. Not that they needed to know. He had outstripped his uncle almost as soon as he had walked in the house. Justin had plans for him—plans that I intended to thwart. Being able to train Harry secretly within the Dreaming could be of untold usefulness.

Harry allowed me to think, not pressing. At the conclusion of my thoughts, I nodded. “And you have learned to control your entering and leaving?”

He gave me a sweet, bashful smile. “The entering, yeah. The leaving, though—my body just drags me out. Either I wake up or I fall deeper asleep.” As if that was something to be ashamed of. I wished that I could touch his cheek, just then.

“We’ll work on that,” I said instead.

He brightened like a small sun. “You mean it? Tonight?”

I smiled back at him, as solemnly as I could. “Tonight. Take my skull to bed with you. I’ll teach you something that I would not teach Justin, and we’ll go together.”

Going into someone else’s Dreaming wasn’t complicated. It was generally just impossible, because it required one thing—perfect trust. Harry had to but take me in his heart and allow me into his body—a possession, if you will, and I would make the transition with him. That’s why Harry was so confident that his Dreaming was secure, and, to his credit, he was right. The Dreaming can’t be tricked by spells or geas. Harry’s faith in me had to be pure.

He understood this. And still, he took me to bed with him. If I could be more in love with him, I don’t see how.

Harry curled up around my skull so that I was completely surrounded by his heat. It was tucked against his hipbones, and he had brought his thighs up and bent his body over the top. I felt more than a little flushed, and was glad that he had turned off the lights, certain that it showed. He whispered my name, and I went to him, drawn less by his command and more by my own helpless need, now. I wanted this as much as he did—possibly, I wanted it more. I had been Tantalus too long. It was much too easy to breach his defenses and sink down into his skin. “Harry…” I breathed. He allowed me far too much liberty, and I lapped it up greedily, not just sharing space with him, but Listening to the words he murmured in my ear… in our ear. The words we murmured. Harry’s heart became my heart, and his breathing, my breathing. I did not attempt to control any of his functions, but lapsed into stillness, just content with being within him. 

Although our minds did not overlap on the level of conscious thought, I did find the place where his dreams took place. A great part of me did not expect that he would be open to me—I am, after all, Hrothbert of Bainbridge, and let the world cower before me, et cetera. 

I continually underestimate my Harry. No matter what I think of my love for him, it pales next to his love for me. It pales.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry finds the way in to the Dreaming, and brings Bob.

We were in a boat. It was a small boat on a vast, dark lake—a lake I had only ever read about. Some wit had called it the Sea of Tranquility but it hardly gave one a feeling of peace. Harry stared at it and I saw his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed nervously—I would second that. The Dreaming had a few dark things in it, and this was one you didn’t want to swim in. The lake was full of the stuff that dreams are made of—literally, dreamstuff. One drink of the water of the lake and you would be lost in dreams until it passed out of your system. Not daydreams, mind you, as Lewis was so astute to distinguish, but dreams-- the ones that woke you in cold sweats and plagued you during waking hours with nagging thoughts that the elevator wasn’t going to stop at the floor you wished, or that you weren’t wearing pants, or that your legs were switched about and your heart was on the wrong side of your skin. Not a pretty thought. 

Harry took the oars and began to row, just as I realized that I was sitting down. The boat lurched under me, and gravity tugged at me. I grinned like an idiot, I’m sure. “Harry!” 

“Yeah, Bob?” He was watching me intently, rowing for a point somewhere over my shoulder, and smiling like he had made the world. 

I stroked my hand over the wood. It was roughly textured—weathered, although I can’t imagine where the weathering would come from in a place like this. It must all have been from Harry’s concept of a boat. Actually, the vessel looked very much like the little skiff we took out on Lake Michigan to practice water magic. “I can feel,” I answered him. Our eyes met, and suddenly, there was only one thing in the world that I truly wanted to touch. The feeling must have been mutual. My mouth went dry with startling quickness, and Harry skimmed the water with his oar—fortunately spraying out away from us both. I raised my eyebrow at him, and he blushed. Oh, to feel the heat of his skin at that moment.

We came upon a little dock. He tossed a rope over the nearest piling and tied it neatly, and then stepped out of the boat with the ease of much practice. Then, turning, he held out his hand to me. Not feeling even remotely calm, I slid my hand into his, gripping it tightly, and stepped up onto the dock. 

Which wasn’t a dock anymore. 

We were on an expanse of flagstones, stretching to four corners of darkness. I looked above me to darkness as well—the stars were gone. “What is this place, Harry?” My voice echoed—that in itself was strange, with no visible walls on which it could bounce. He squeezed my hand, and then abruptly let go to thrust his fingers nervously thought his curls.

“I’ve been, um, building. This was meant to be a castle—a fortress, like I was telling you? But, I haven’t been able to make the walls yet, and…” He tapered off into silence. I realized that I was staring at him, and I looked away, attempting to hide my astonishment. This was well beyond me, but I didn’t want to frighten him by saying so. Truth was, I felt a little overwhelmed—being suddenly corporeal after a hundred lifetimes of insubstantiality can do that to a person, I supposed. 

“Harry, how long have you been working on this?” Thankfully, my voice sounded normal enough. He tipped his head back to calculate, exposing a lovely length of throat.

“Two weeks? It was the full moon when I got in—the night we picked rehanna from the garden?”

I smiled. “The night you took my skull out for a walk, you mean?”

“You’re such a romantic, Bob—you just can’t admit it.” He reached a hand out to the lapel of my jacket, and frowned. “Do you always look this… stuffy?”

“What would you prefer me wear?” I asked, annoyed. Of all the first questions he could have asked me, having me here in front of him, corporeal… I could have listed a dozen wizards who would have given a decade of their lives for this opportunity—Justin included, and Harry Dresden wanted to know about my haberdashery. 

“What would you prefer to wear, Bob?”

I would have thought that would have been obvious. I reared a disapproving eyebrow. “This.”

He put up his hands in surrender, grinning. “Besides the suit. Don’t you have… don’t you ever relax?”

“Not around Justin.” But I smoothed my expression a little—this was Harry, after all. What did he know of the intricacies and politics of walls?

He waved his hands in a small circle. “Well, he’s not here. In case you hadn’t noticed?”

I lifted my chin, at my most formal. “Are you commanding me to relax?”

“No!” Harry was exasperated with me, which was quite amusing for a change. I just wondered… if you ever, you know… let it all hang out. Cut loose.” He was beginning to flush—it looked very becoming.

“Let my hair down?” I added dryly. Harry eyed my short silver hair and nodded slowly, a teasing grin blooming on his full lips. He stepped slightly towards me.

“May I approach the Holy Personage Lord Ghost?” His eyes, dark and beguiling, were sparkling with some reflected light I did not know the source of. I tilted my head, uncertain of his game.

“You may.” I pursed my lips. He stepped right up to me, so that his body was mere inches from mine, but not touching.

He swallowed. “May I…. touch you?” I could feel the heat from his body—a truly luxurious sensation. Maddening, too. I gave him a slow, soft perusal. 

“To what purpose, young Harry?”

“To the purpose of removing some of these layers, Bob.” And his hand trembled, for all of his bravado. I nodded, and saints preserve me, I swallowed my nerves. At least we were anxious both at once. I could never hold much pretense with him, nor he with me. It made our stay in Justin’s house all that much more precarious.

Harry’s hands slid under my lapels and my breath caught at the heat and pressure and texture of his touch. How a simple touch could undo me I cannot say, except to stress the lengths to which we had gone to come here. As he moved his hands up over my shoulders, getting the leverage to remove my coat, his dark eyes met mine, and I realized in the small part of my brain reserved for idle thoughts how tall he had grown. He was very nearly even with me, now. His hands stroked down my arms—the jacket fell to the floor. In the Nevernever, it would stay substantial as long as I willed it, but I wasn’t concentrating very well at the moment.

Harry tipped his head, perusing my body for the next article of clothing that would undergo his purge. He stepped even closer and his arms wound about my neck as he undid my ascot. I chuckled gently. “I thought that might be next,” I murmured into his cheek.

“I like it better than Uncle Justin’s ties. Still too stuffy for the Dreaming, Bob.” This close, his voice deepened to a soft purr I could feel in my ribs. He stepped back, but his heat imprint remained. I barely felt the loosening and the tug of silk that was the demise of my neckwear. Ah, but when his fingers went to the buttons of my waistcoat, I nearly balked—really, this was too much. A man needed some shelter against temptation—would he divest me of all my armor? But the soft sensation of his fingertips at the buttons as they slowly trailed down my ribs and stomach left me without objection. Harry must have known he had me helpless—he was exceptionally clever at picking up my nonverbal cues. Justin had always been complete shite at it.

However, at some point very soon, Dreaming or no, the line had to be drawn. We both of us still had to live in Justin’s house, and while I was under geas, I had to be able to tell the truth to him and not incriminate us both to our deaths. And if things kept on the way they were going, there was no way Justin would miss that.

“That’s quite enough, Harry,” I managed, as his nimble fingers went to the buttons at my shirt collar.

His dark eyes were full of mischief. He knew exactly how far the line I had drawn would stretch. In a soft voice, he leaned in, his lips grazing my ear, and whispered, “Indulge me, Bob.”

Oh, Harry, you devious child. I pulled away from him, slightly. “You’ve indulged yourself quite enough for one night.” Somehow, I managed to look severe. At least, I think I did. 

Harry stroked a gentle finger around the top of my collar, his gaze unfocused. “Harry…” I began again, trying desperately to ignore the lace of trailing fire that his touch ignited down my neck and shoulders. “Please.”

Perhaps not the best choice of words. One button came undone, and then another. And then I stepped backwards, startling us both. “Please,” I repeated. Damn my voice for shaking.

Harry licked his bottom lip. “Would you…” His voice was husky, his eyes fixed on my newly exposed throat. “If nothing else, would you roll up your sleeves?”

I narrowed my eyes suspiciously. “That’s all you want of me, Harry Dresden?”

He had the grace to look embarrassed, his hand coming up to sweep through unruly locks. And then, stars help me, he slowly lowered himself to his knees in front of me and took my right hand in both of his. He pressed his full, sweet lips against my open palm, and then, his quick fingers making short work of the buttons at my cuff, he shifted the iron manacle out of the way and pressed another warm kiss against my wrist. 

I no longer trusted myself to speak. With this young man on his knees in front of me, beautiful and full of love—who trusted me with his Dreaming and whom I trusted with my most bitterly used heart… I no longer knew how to qualify right and wrong where he was concerned. I would die for him. I would most certainly kill for him, without a thought or a concern for who stood in the way. 

I was lost.

I also sank to my knees, and I took him in my arms. His skin was fever hot, his wiry body pliant as he wrapped himself around me and held on. I know not how long we stayed there, as I rocked him as I had longed to do, all these years we had been denied the sweet comfort of each other’s embrace. Eventually, he sank down into my lap, where I stroked his hair until his own dreaming tugged him out. 

I do not believe I have spent a more peaceful hour since my death.


	3. Chapter 3

Harry had been radiant during his lessons—even I had trouble focusing, wondering what in the world he could have gotten into that could be so worth a dozen reprimands. Finally, after he had returned from lunch in a blissful haze that no lessons on the Wyrd and Perthro could penetrate, I threw my hands up in the air. “Would you prefer if I mimed the pertinent Latin phraseology while doing a striptease to Led Zeppelin, Harry? Or perhaps you would prefer a pole dance?”

He blinked at me from where he had been gazing at the curve of my neck. Some schoolboys stared out the window; mine stared at my body, thinking stars knew what sorts of lustful thoughts. It’s a wonder he remembered anything of the lectures I gave, but I supposed it’s a testimony to his excellent mind that he managed to get something down on paper every night. This time, though, I knew I had him. “Um, sorry Bob?” He managed an apologetic look, but I wasn’t having any of it. I took the three strides over to his desk in a heartbeat, my voice primed for cutting.

“Your uncle is coming back in less than a week. If you have any plans for keeping up your lessons with me, you need to begin acting like a student and not like a pining lover.” Harry flushed a lovely olive peach, and I frowned, pained, and dropped my forehead into one hand. “Justin will carve you up for supper if he has an inkling that you have feelings for me, or worse, that they’re requited.”

“Are they?” Harry cut in, his eyes dark. I stopped mid-tirade, mouth half open. “Are they?” he repeated, as if I hadn’t heard. 

“You doubt?” I whispered, my thoughts grinding to silence. I’m not certain what I looked like, exactly, but shock and disbelief were likely front-runners. He looked away from me, no doubt at the hurt in my voice, but plunged relentlessly on.

“Do I have reason to? With all the time we’ve spent together and… and you’ve barely touched me.” His long lashes cast shadows on his cheeks in the afternoon sun. I knew what they felt like, flicking against my skin. Somehow I remembered differently—I remembered near-constant touching… a fingertip grazing down my thigh, or my hand at the small of his back. I shook my head at him, searching for words.

“Harry… this is not about whether I love you or not.” I leaned so near him that I’m certain I was overlapping him. “This is about survival. We are in your uncle’s house. However, that will not always be so.” 

Something seemed to give, and Harry sighed deeply. He folded onto the desk, all of the electric energy of the day lapsing out of him in a rush. “He’ll never let go of you, Bob. I wouldn’t, if I had you.”

I smiled, feeling a warm flush seep through me. “Oh, Harry. Darling, Justin leads a dangerous life. No one lives forever.”

He pondered that for a moment, and then looked up at me, his eyes wide. “Bob, never let me get on your bad side, okay?”

“Would that I had the power to guarantee that.” I played at tucking his unruly hair behind his ears, suddenly wishing it were night. The evenings seemed to stretch in to years, lately. 

Harry continued to stare softly at me. “I have something for you tonight, Bob. Something I made for you.” I nodded, and realized somehow that his initial joy had lost its strength. Being within Justin’s domain did that. But the deep-seated joy—that radiance that was embedded within him—nothing Justin did could touch that. 

“Tonight, Harry.” I didn’t know what I was promising. I supposed that I would find out when I got there.

* * *

I shouldn’t have worried about his enthusiasm. When I entered the Dreaming with Harry that night, it was back in full force. He dragged me across the flagstones to the roaring fire, something we had managed only a few nights before, and pointed triumphantly at the floor, as if I could miss what was laying there. A magnificent white sheepskin, disproportionately huge and looking soft enough to die on, lay sprawled out in front of the fire. A longing breath escaped me before I could call it back, and he gave me a fierce, triumphant grin. “I’ve finally discovered a temptation you can’t resist!” he crowed, and tore off his shirt with one mad fling, kneeling into the incredible-looking fleecy softness before diving, spread-eagled, into the plush wool.

It did look tempting. Harry had, for the entire time we had been in the Dreaming, through various means and devices been attempting to divest me of my shirt, and I had been working equally hard to keep it on. To both of us, it represented the last boundary—if this wall fell, then everything else would. Even I couldn’t take the onslaught of that much sensation—I knew very well what Harry would do with that much of me at his disposal. As long as I could keep some semblance of propriety between us, we would last out this time, and Justin would have no reason would suspect the true blow when it fell.

And it would fall.

But standing there, sheltered within the Dreaming, all of that seemed very far away. Harry gazed up at me, flushed and beautiful, and I scowled at him playfully. “Why is this so important to you?”

He smiled blissfully. “Sensation is the food of the body, Bob, and you’ve been starving for so long. I’ve been starving…” His eyes trailed across my forearms, still exposed since that first night, and up to my throat. I sighed.

“If you think I’m going to roll around on that rug like a bitch in heat…” But he merely raised a dark eyebrow, arching his back so that his ribs flexed against his skin, looking for all the world like the banquet that completed his metaphor. He knew he had me. He could afford to be insolent.

For his insolence, though, I took my time unbuttoning my shirt. I wanted every pearl button, every tugging buttonhole to be an agony of waiting for him. By the time my hands were on the buttons at waist-level, his fingers were flexing unconsciously, and he was licking his lips, a hedonistic portrait of desire. When I parted the shirt, slowly, I thought he was going to come up off the floor. And then the cool air hit my skin, and teasing Harry became less important than fulfilling my own suddenly very intense desires. With a flick, the shirt was gone, and with it, the last border between us. 

I was relieved. No more fighting. Let the devil take us both.

I sank down onto the sheepskin, luxuriating in the riotous richness of it. “Oh, gods,” were the whispered words torn from my throat. The texture of the wool was slightly rough and very dense, and as I slid backwards into it, I rocked my shoulders, burying myself face-upwards and as deeply as possible. “Harry, this is extraordinary. How long…”

“Shh, Bob.” He was very close to me, but my eyes were closed so I couldn’t see exactly how close. “Stop being a teacher. Just…” I felt a hot, gentle fingertip trace my collarbone, and my eyes opened. Harry was watching me, looking more a Greek god than a boy most of the way to eighteen. Lips parted, olive skin glowing, he gazed at me with lust-dark eyes and an expression so openly vulnerable, so full of both trust and desire that the tiny hairline cracks in my walls summarily gave under the pressure. 

When Harry reached for me, I was unresisting. 

So I found myself with my back against the softest sheepskin ever conceived by man and with an armful of young wizard, as well. Harry tucked his cheek into the bend of my throat, his lips pressed distractingly against the hollow, and his gentle, eager hands stroking whatever of my skin was within the spread of his fingers. I had the whole of his back within easy reach now, and in this soft darkness began a slow, luxurious perusal of every contour of skin and plane of muscle, occasionally diving back into his hair or stroking down his arms.

It was a sensual feast. He touched me as if I were the first person he had ever touched… and indeed, perhaps I was. His hands were unbelievably gentle, stroking lightly over my muscle and bone as if I were made of the finest silk. His delicate touch on my ribs and shoulders and breast and flanks, exploring and memorizing… if I had not already been undone, well… it was Harry, the child whom I loved, and who, with a great deal of care and luck, would grow into the man whom I would serve, freeing me from the curse of Justin Morningway forever. Grand dreams, I realize. They were easy to have here in this place. 

And if his lips happened to graze against my throat, tracing a line of dizzying fire along my jaw… or if my hand happened to dip below his waist in outlining the hollow of his hip... What man indeed could tell what our dream was, within the dark night of the Dreaming? His skin was unbelievably soft, and the more I touched of him, the more I wanted. It was unbearable, not taking him then and there on that rug smelling of wild air and musk. His hips rocked slowly into my hand even as I pulled away from him, and I buried my face in his shoulder, my hands in his hair, my desires deep inside me where I could gain some semblance of control over them. Harry suffered no such qualms, of course, and tormented me freely-- lips, teeth, and hands. 

I loved the child, but I did, at some points that night wish for a rope with which to bind his roaming hands.

We lay on the rug until Harry’s dreamscape began calling him back; he had gotten better at recognizing the feel of true sleep tugging at him. I gently untangled myself from the long-limbed boy who had managed to wind himself around me in the passing hours like a grapevine, and helped him to stand. He looked at me groggily as I eased his swaying with my hands on his shoulders, and smiled.

“I love you, Bob.” It slid out of his mouth so easily. He could just have easily reached inside my ribcage and squeezed my heart in his hands until the blood ran down his arms. I tucked his hair behind his ears, for real this time.

“Harry, darling, I love you as well. For always. Never doubt me.” 

He tilted his head up, then, and softly pressed his lips against mine in a kiss that felt like a possession, although who owned whom I could no longer deliniate. Our bodies touched like heat-brands, and he took my head in his hands, firming up against me even as I melted into him. Then, in a whisper, he was gone, taken by his own dreamscape. I was tugged out a moment later, still staring off into the middle distance, wondering how I was ever going to teach a lesson to my darling Harry ever again.

* * *

Disaster struck in the morning.

Justin came home suddenly, very early, and on entering Harry’s bedroom, found him abed with my skull curled in the cage of his abdomen and thighs. I didn’t even have time to warn him. He was in a rage. I’ve always known that Justin has harbored feelings towards me—desire that I would want to serve him in bed as well as out. These were the feelings that made me caution Harry, and require that we keep out relationship strictly friendly. But it was far too late for that now. Justin cast a sleeping spell over Harry and carried my skull out of the room, covering me with the sensation of a pit of eels. I had no choice but to follow. 

Once in the library, his chosen place of inquisition, one damning question after another came out of Justin’s bitter gravesmouth.

“Did you kiss him?”

“No,” I answered truthfully, hedging around my cursed geas. It was a close thing. My head swam, but I held on to the thin line of stark truth.

“Did he kiss you?”

Damn him for his thoroughness. “Yes.”

“Did you enjoy it?” Justin’s eyes were wide and glassy. I imagined him masturbating to this conversation later. I then imagined his small, impotent penis bursting into a thousand pustules of burning magma and ribboning off his body in agonizing beads of fire. It made me feel slightly better. I thought through the simple spell as I answered him in a way that damned myself and let Harry off the hook.

“Of course, Justin. He’s a beautiful child.”

“Come now, Hrothbert. If you’re dreaming with him, if you’re possessing him… then he has to trust you. Does he love you?”

Again, I twisted the truth as far as the geas would allow. “He thinks he does, Justin. But he’s a boy. Does it matter?” I could feel the weight of my words, and I prayed that Harry wasn’t listening. The Dreaming was likely lost forever, anyway, and all of our plans crushed to oblivion. Justin would go painfully, I promised myself.

Justin got a wicked little smile, and I knew what was coming next—the question I couldn’t avoid. “Do you love him, Hrothbert?” Around the edges of his question was a lace of bitter pain. I saw my own death sentence there, and Harry’s.

“Yes.” The word came out of me like a dagger, and I imagined it impaling the little bastard right between the eyes. “Love can be many things. As I said, he’s quite a prize. I would have… apprenticed him, had things been different.”

This was not the answer Justin had been expecting, I delighted to see. I believe he knew, deep down, that I was lying, but his faith in the magical binding was too strong to truly question my answer. He laughed bitterly, but his heart wasn’t in it. “I can only imagine the fate of your apprentices, Hrothbert. How many survived to manhood, I wonder?”

I mastered the urge to slice his ego into fish food. As tempting as it was, this was politics, and Harry the prize. And I hadn’t missed that Justin was using my name—I was a man to him, now. He was allowing me that power over him. Fool. “You might have—you have never been interested in love.” I raised a slight eyebrow at him, underlining the supposed weakness in his nephew even as I strengthened his own status as criminal mastermind. I could loathe myself later— the Storm was in her full fury, and Harry and I were in the first ring of it.

Justin contemplated this, his piggish eyes glinting in the morning sun. He nodded sagely. “Perhaps. And yet, had I asked you would not have given me what you so freely give to him.”

I did not answer, not feeling compelled to do so. It was true—point to him. What Justin asked of me shut out the possibility of love for him—the horror of his workings precluded it. Monsters do not love. Did he understand, I wonder, that I was no longer a monster? After a moment, he stood, and began to pace. “You will cease your incursions into the Nevernever, Hrothbert, and concentrate on teaching Harry his lessons as we have agreed. We will never speak of this again. You will never speak of this as long as I hold bond over you.” I felt the geas snap over me, binding me to his will, and I nodded blandly, as if this were entirely acceptable.

“As you wish, Justin,” I said with as much boredom as I could muster, as if it had been a passing fancy, the ability to interact with the world… to touch Harry. I would not grieve now. Justin would not live forever. His days were looking to be particularly numbered lately. “How was your trip?...”

It was only later, when I was finally able to visit Harry, that I realized the extent of the tragedy that Justin had inflicted upon us. Not only would we not be revisiting the Dreaming, but Harry did not remember it. He did not remember it. Justin had punched little holes in his memory, black and precise. For weeks after, Harry had terrible nightmares of sinking boats and woke screaming, babbling about the water swallowing him up. I heard him, from where I was.

But I could do nothing. I could not even comfort him, since Justin had locked my skull in the cage in the library, and Harry could not undo the binding. He would tell me in the morning in whispered conferences of his terrible dreams, shooting terrified, furtive glances over his shoulder, and beg me for a spell that would keep him from dreaming. Because of Justin’s binding, I was unable to talk to him about it, and he became withdrawn, the Dreaming lost. 

The Storm had torn our little boat to pieces, and we had drowned in the water of nightmares. 

But storms return with the seasons, and next time it would be Justin who would be caught without shelter. This I promised, to Harry in his silence, and to the darkness that owned me. No boat would be worthy; no island wide enough; no roof strong enough to save him. 

I am Hrothbert of Bainbridge. Let the world cower before me.


End file.
